


Eavesdropping on the Songs of Whales

by SpaceDino



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: (as usual it seems), Blood, I'll keep tagging as I expand, Lots of blood in the water, M/M, Merfolk AU, Merman Hunk (Voltron), Merman Lance (Voltron), Merman Shiro (Voltron), Rescuing Shiro, Shipwrecks, Swearing, but there's nothing truly graphic?, cursing, how do tags, mermaid au, not sure about the rating
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-28
Updated: 2017-03-24
Packaged: 2018-10-10 02:43:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,942
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10427376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpaceDino/pseuds/SpaceDino
Summary: Hunk and Lance, caught in a storm away from home, are witnesses to a Galran ship getting shipwrecked while trying to take shelter in a bay. They're fully prepared to wait the typhoon-worthy conditions out, but what they aren't prepared for is the scent of another Mer's blood in the water...





	

**Author's Note:**

> Merman!Lance is a great favourite of mine, so I thought why not at least write something for it.
> 
> Neither the characters nor the title of the work belong to me. The title is from the song [Songs of Whales](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQO76-NWt-w) by the Parlotones. Great song, great indie-rock band, go check it out.
> 
> The only thing I truly own here are the mistakes. Those are mine, as this hasn't been beta'ed. To anybody willing and brave enough, pointing out mistakes would be greatly appreciated.

Hunk and Lance watched together as the ship was tossed around by the storm, nothing but a tiny raft amongst the monstrous waves that were throwing it to and fro in a way that almost made Hunk sick watching. The rocking motion was only made worse by the huge waves that swamped the deck, beating against the metal fiercely over and over and over again, sweeping anything that wasn’t fixed to the deck into the icy ocean.

And the waves were only getting stronger. They were getting to the point where Lance and Hunk, sheltered though they were in the thickest of the outcropping of rocks, had to anchor themselves to the rocks using their tails and by tangling themselves into the thick sea grasses that grew all over them in order not to be swept away.

"Lance, we have to get out of here," Hunk urged him, tugging plaintively on his friend’s arm. "If we don’t get dashed to pieces on these rocks, we’re going to be crushed by the ship when…"

He trailed off as a new wave started to build on the horizon. And build, and build, and build, until it became the largest wave either of the mermen had ever seen in their lives, towering over the ship as it bore down on it.

“Holy _quiznak_ ,” Lance breathed weakly, and his voice wavered like he was about to pass out from the sheer disbelief.

“The ship’s never going to survive that,” Hunk observed dazedly.

Silently they watched the wave loom ever closer to the ship, and silently they tightened their grips on the thick weeks around them, twining their tails harder around the slick rocks.

When the wave hit the ship, it took a moment before the resounding _crack_ reached them, even through the water.

“ _Shit_ ,” Lance breathed.

“Yeah,” Hunk agreed.

They watched, enraptured, as the ship cracked straight through with the weight of the water crashing down on its deck. They couldn’t hear them underwater over the raging storm, but Lance could just imagine the screams from the ship as the crew realised what had happened, realised their fate. He shuddered at the idea, and despite the fact that he knew that nobody good could be on that ship, he was glad that he couldn’t hear them, hear how terrible he knew they’d be.

They watched as the ship sank, faster than anything that size had any right to, and they listened as the metal creaked and bent under the immense pressure of the water.

In the torn up water, it didn’t take long for the first scent of blood to infiltrate the waters around them. Lance didn’t want to smell it, he _didn’t_ , but no attempts at filtering the water around his mouth and nose helped whatsoever, and before long he started to feel sick. Beside him, occasionally being thrown against him by the strong currents, Hunk was also looking green around the gills. 

“We’ve gotta get out of here, man,” Hunk said weakly.

“How? It’s like you said, we’ll be dashed to pieces against the rocks.”

“That’ll happen either way,” Hunk insisted.

Lance didn’t have anything to say to that, but neither of them felt inclined to leave their temporarily safe haven, so they curled up closer to the rocks again, digging themselves further into the minimal shelter the sea weeds provided.

“I feel like a damn--” Lance never got to finish that thought, as right in the middle of it something changed in the water. A particular scent cut through the disgusting smog of Galra blood, and suddenly both Hunk and Lance went rigid.

“Do you…?”

“Yeah,” Hunk’s voice broke on the single syllable.

“We’ve gotta,” Lance said before swallowing, head swivelling desperately to see if he was able to locate the source of the scent. “We’ve gotta help them!”

“Lance, we _can’t_ ,” Hunk cried, catching hold of his arm in a tight grasp and eyes glowing with worry.

“But whoever they are, they’re hurt!”

“Lance, they’re a _Mer_ , they’ll be fine in the water until the main wreckage sinks out of the way and we can help,” Hunk insisted, somehow sounding firm and gentle despite the panic obvious in his eyes.

Lance’s tail twisted helplessly. He knew that Hunk was right, no matter how much he didn’t want it to be true. “OK, but we won’t wait long, right?”

Hunk bit into his lower lip. “No, OK, we won’t.”

So together they waited.

And it was the longest three minutes of Lance’s life. The water only got thicker with Galra blood, obscuring but not quite obliterating the sharp scent of Mer blood and pain. But despite the scent, neither Lance nor Hunk could make out any distress calls whatsoever. Lance tried desperately to convince himself that it was just because of the racket the creaking metal of the ship was making, and not the other possibility.

The water was murky, but Lance could see the shape of the gigantic hull as it descended into the depths of the bay, dragging smaller shapes down in its enormously powerful slipstream.

“Hunk,” Lance said, shaking the other merman’s shoulder when he realised that he had his hands clamped over his ears as best he could to block out the screeching of metal on metal. “Hunk, we have to go now.” 

“But the slipstream…”

“Hunk, I haven’t heard a call yet, and that means that whoever’s out there… they’re hurt, and they’re hurt bad,” Lance choked a little on the admission. “They won’t be able to fight it.”

Hunk felt torn between listening to his instincts which screamed at him to stay in the relative safety of the rocks, where he and Lance at least had a chance of survival, and the other instincts that were screaming, equally loudly, at him to venture out to help whoever was in trouble.

Wordlessly, he nodded, and Lance didn’t wait even a moment before wriggling himself out of the weeds and into the labyrinth of rocks that led to the open water. Hunk followed more slowly, carefully clinging to the weeds in order to keep from being thrown into the rocks by the force of the currents.

Together they raced out into the murky waters of the bay, and immediately Lance started sounding, clicking and screeching into the water in an effort to locate the source of the mermaid in distress. They received nothing in reply, but Lance kept at it, aided by Hunk now and again as they sped through the wreckage left in the surface water, fighting as much as they could against the pull of the slipstream that threatened to drag them down with the rest of the detritus.

Lance weaved quickly through the worst of it, slipping between crates, over and under huge sheets of metal and wood that had yet to sink, and pushing cargo out of the way. Hunk watched him carefully while keeping a lookout for their quarry.

"Lance, please, don't get caught up in the ropes!" he called out, hoping to all the deities that his friend had heard and for once in his life would listen to him.

Lance heard him, but didn't stop in his desperate search of the debris, sickeningly aware of the fact that the scent of Mer blood was getting thicker and thicker in the water.

And then Hunk stopped dead and his last call ended in a choked gasp, for to his right, barely visible through the water, was the weakly thrashing silhouette of a Mer.

“ _Lance_ ,” he called, and the blue tail reappeared beside him along with another gasp.

The two shot through the water towards the shape, which was slowing in its movements. Ever the vocal one, Lance called ahead, but once again received no reply.

The Mer was obscured by a large cloud of blood that had seeped into the water surrounding it, but through it Hunk could see that their struggle was getting weaker by the second. They would have to act fast if they wanted to save them. Already Hunk was running through the things he knew about first aid in his head. _Get them onto their back, support their hips and spine, tail should be straight and facing the current head-on to avoid bending, make sure the gills are open and that their eyes are bright and colours are clear…_

What colour was the Mer? Hunk couldn’t even tell through the murky water, and he had to draw closer to see. It looked… dark blue, maybe. Indigo?

No. Purple.

_Galra._

Both Hunk and Lance stopped dead in their tracks. Well, Hunk stopped while Lance changed his course and swerved in a wide curve past the merman, who appeared to be somehow Galran.

“What the quiznak?” Lance clicked in staccato as he curved back towards Hunk. Hunk was just staring, unable to fully comprehend what was in front of his very eyes.

The sight in question was definitely a merman, from the tail to the splaying fins right down to the small scales surrounding his hips and eyes, but his tail colour was a deep silvery grey - almost black, really - streaked with purple, even though his skin paled to a healthy tan which was slashed with white scar tissue. Most disturbing were his facial features, which were cut through by a great scar over the bridge of his nose that clearly accompanied the rest of the scarring on his body.

“What the hell is this?” Lance half shrieked, not daring to get any closer.

The merman’s eyes were wide as he took them in, but the movement of his tail could barely even be classified as thrashing anymore, and he wasn’t even moving up through the water. For a second Hunk and Lance wondered why he didn’t use his arms to steady himself, but that led them to look at his body, and suddenly Hunk felt queasy. The merman's arms had been trapped tightly to his body by some sort of straps that encircled his torso and went over his shoulders, almost like a harness. His neck and mouth were almost completely obscured by what looked like a thick, heavy muzzle, and Hunk saw a binding ring around his tail that must have been used to keep him still.

As they watched and took it all in, the strange merman’s eyes started drifting closed, and the last sign of life was a low and helpless crooning that escaped his lips. The sound of giving up.

This more than anything jolted Hunk into action, and with a powerful sweep of his tail he was there, holding the now unconscious mermaid upright.

“What’re you _doing_?” Lance clicked in disbelief.

“Helping him, what else?” Hunk’s clicks were high-pitched and desperate. “Come help me!”

“But he’s… he’s not--”

“Lance, can you not see the gigantic scaly tail in front of you?" Hunk snapped before he could stop himself. "He’s a merman, and we have to help him!” he tried to ammend in a kinder, if not less urgent voice.

“But what’s wrong with him? I mean, unless he can’t breathe under water, unless he’s not really a merman or they did something to him or—” Lance was starting to hyperventilate, which was a pretty painful thing to do under water.

“ _Lance_ ,” Hunk suddenly clicked. “Help now, panic later.”

“Oh, um, right, OK,” Lance said, sweeping his tail too so that he came up under the merman. “But what’s wrong with him, why is he…?” Hunk interrupted his question with an exclamation at a discovery.

“Lance, they… they’ve clamped his gills shut,” Hunk’s voice broke as he clicked in abject horror. “He can’t breathe!”

“What?” Lance’s brain seemed to derail at the notion of the pure cruelty that the Galra must have possessed to do something like that to the merman. It took him a second, but then Hunk’s sharp, panicked clicking brought him out of his shock and he realised what needed to be done.

“His lungs,” he clicked and checked the muzzle quickly. “The, the muzzle, it isn’t keeping his mouth or nose closed. We need to get him to the surface.”

“In this storm?” the pitch of Hunk’s clicks was rising, showing his panic. “We can barely keep ourselves upright down here!”

“He’ll drown if we don’t,” Lance cried in distress.

Hunk’s grip tightened and his eyes widened as the gravity of the situation hit him all over again. His gill slits opened wide as his breathing became shallow and laboured.

“OK. OK,” he said. “Let’s go.”

Neither wasted a second in grabbing an arm, and together, tails straining and all secondary fins tucked in tightly to avoid being buffeted by the waves, they started dragging the unconscious merman towards the surface.

And getting to the surface wasn’t even the hard part, they soon discovered. The dead weight of the unconscious merman proved to be very hard to keep afloat, and more than once his head dipped under the water again while they tried to keep his body under control in the pounding storm.

“Shit,” Lance yelled. Between keeping themselves afloat and in the same spot, still getting tossed around by the breaking waves, neither had any time to check if the merman was actually breathing.

“We need to get further out,” Lance yelled above the roaring of the rain hitting the water. He knew that the deeper the water, the less breaking waves there would be, and the swells would be easier to handle.

“We can barely keep him afloat, Lance, how the hell are we going to swim him all the way to the open water?” Hunk cried.

Lance floundered helplessly in a panic for beat. “I don’t… what are we gonna do, Hunk?”

Hunk thought for a moment, at least as best he could between the rest of what was happening. Even as he paused to consider the stranger's tail was pulled away from him by a wave and he had to scramble to get them back under control.

“Let’s get him to the rocks,” he yelled. “At least there we can hold ourselves down.”

“Yeah… yeah, OK,” Lance said, probably too quietly to be audible over the still-raging storm, but in the end it didn’t matter, because they both knew it was likely their only chance.

Trying to keep a course parallel to the waves proved to be nearly impossible, so Lance and Hunk had to struggle towards the rocks in an exhausting zig-zag pattern - fighting their way out towards the mouth of the bay in the troughs of the waves, then bracing themselves for impact when the swells hit them. Lance was gasping for any oxygen available to him, whether from the air or the water, even before they reached the halfway point, and he could tell Hunk was suffering just as much behind him.

It was a great relief when they reached the rocks, several lengths closer to the beach than where they had originally been hiding, but relatively safe from the brunt of the storm. The waves were breaking the brunt of their force on the rocks further out, meaning that the two of them were able to manouevre themselves and the body between them through the outer rocks and into a smaller, more sheltered pool. Lance hissed and cursed colourfully when a sharp barnacle sliced through his softer hip scales, and Hunk bit his lip hard enough to make it bleed when his middle fin got caught and torn on a rock, but they counted themselves lucky when they made it to the small pool in one piece.

Here it was slightly easier to keep the other merman afloat, which allowed Lance to take a closer look at the situation of his breathing.

"Hunk, he's still not breathing!" he panicked none too quietly.

"Let me see if I can get the harness and muzzle off," Hunk said urgently, letting more weight rest on Lance in order to inspect the catches behind the merman's neck.

Several seconds of staring and tugging later, he leaned back and wailed in despair. "I can't get them off! The catches must be locked with some sort of biometric system!"

"Can't you break them?"

Hunk's eyes darkened and he put a little more distance between himself and the merman. "I-- I could try, but it might hurt him."

"Better a hurt merman than a dead one," Lance urged. "Come on, Hunk, he really will die if we can't get those off."

Hunk hesitated for one last moment before leaning forwards and renewing his efforts on the catches. First he took his sharp teeth to the leather strapping of the muzzle, being careful not to nick the merman's scalp or neck, gnawing at it insistently. It was an awkward position and caused him to sneeze several times when he accidentally inhaled a few strands of the merman's hair as well as having to stretch his jaw in such a way that it hurt, but he was nothing if not determined and managed to get through the strap in a few minutes.

The moment that was finished Lance tore the muzzle off and started squeezing the merman fiercely around the middle, trying to force the stale water from his mouth and lungs.

"Shit, shit, shit, it's been so long," he muttered, knowing full well that while a merman's limit was a lot longer than a Galran's, they were probably right on that limit, if not over it.

"Lance, get him under water," Hunk yelled at him as he readjusted his stance so that his tail was facing his friend. Lance understood quickly enough and ducked under the surface with the merman, getting him into position.

Hunk waited only long enough for Lance to get a good hold on the merman's slack jaw before beginning to fan his tail, pumping strongly to get water flowing through the merman's gills. He braced himself against the rocks behind him in order to pump harder, and Lance found he had to struggle a little to keep himself from being pushed away by the force of it. Both of them were exhausted, and neither had much strength to do his job anymore, but neither gave up or started giving out, refusing to accept what was fast becoming innevitable.

But it paid off. It paid off as the merman suddenly jerked in Lance's arms, jaw working by itself to open and close, taking in great mouthfuls of oxygen-rich water as his eyes snapped open before drooping to an exhausted halfway open.

Lance almost found himself crying with relief, and just about stopped himself from collapsing as the shock and relief mingled together in a potent, mind-numbing mixture which just barely stopped short of absolutely paralysing him.

Beside him the larger merman was still gasping for breath, but had found it in himself to start looking around himself in a jerking, panicky manner.

"What-- where am I?" he panted, and though his voice was raspy and hoarse Lance could appreciate it's low pitch, even though the uncertainty colouring the tone heavily didn't suit it at all.

"You're--"

"--safe," Hunk finished for him, having identified the look on Lance's face and shooting him a withering warning look.

"But what--?"

"The ship sank, we rescued you," Lance said shortly, somewhat chastised by Hunk's disapproval, but (totally reasonably) annoyed that he'd missed out on making a good first impression on the merman, whom, his slightly delirious might had thought to inform him, was very, very good-looking.

"Oh," was said weakly as the merman looked out towards the wall of rocks separating them from the torn up bay.

"We managed to get that off of you," Hunk said, gesturing to the muzzle/strangler combination lying on the bed of the rock pool. "But I'll need to use my teeth again to get the rest off."

The merman's eyes became guarded and nervous at that, but after a moment's careful consideration and scrutiny of both Hunk and Lance, who was still helping him stay afloat while his arms were tied back, he nodded mutely and kept still while Hunk swept over to them.

It took Hunk many tries and apologies to get through the body restraints, as they were thicker and more heavy duty than their facial counterparts. The merman, who told them he was called Shiro (more than that he wouldn't say), barely moved a muscle throughout the process, only hissing quietly whenever Hunk accidentally nicked his skin instead of his bondings. Hunk's sincere apologies each time it happened seemed to keep him from freaking out, even as his tail started to flick more strongly in nervousness.

Eventually Lance decided that he couldn't keep his curiosity bottled up any longer.

"Why were you on that ship?" he blurted out when Hunk moved on to the second-last strap. Immediately upon seeing Shiro's expression at that, he clamped both hands to his mouth and flicked his tail forwards, curling into himself as he put distance between himself and the glowering merman, whose entire posture screamed "Attack". Even his fins had flared up, making him appear even larger than what he had already been. Behind Shiro, Hunk had stilled, but he wasn't giving Lance the Look like he'd expected; rather, he was frowning as he watched Shiro intently, obviously anticipating something bad.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I wasn't thinking when I-- I usually-- please, I didn't mean to--"

"It's OK," Shiro said stiffly after shaking his head as if to clear it. "It's just-- I wasn't exactly there because I wanted to be there."

Lance shook his head thoroughly and backed off even more. "I-- yeah, I'm sorry, I really messed up there."

"It really is alright," Shiro reassured him, relaxing his fins and his torso. "I'm sorry for-- for scaring you like that."

Lance snorted, but even to him it sounded slightly panicky. "Yeah right, I wasn't _scared_ ," he insisted with a horribly fake laugh.

Not even Shiro bought the act - Shiro, who'd known him for less than ten minutes. Lance shifted uncomfortably beneath Shiro's intense stare, which really seemed unfair because Shiro was the one who'd just escaped what appeared to have been utter torture, so how was he able to pull off that intense searching look, as if it was Lance who needed the help?

At least the encounter put the idea of asking any more questions out of Lance's mind, and he settled for swishing around the outer edge of the pool while Hunk finished off the last of the straps. When the harness fell away, Shiro exhaled long and low as he flexed his shoulders (dear deity Lance wished he hadn't been behind him to see those back muscles flex), rubbing at his arms to try and get rid of the marks left by the too-tight restraints.

"Thank you, Hunk," Shiro said, voice low and sincere. "And thank you, Lance," he added, glancing between the two of them. "I owe the two of you my life."

"Please don't," Hunk stuttured, turning a deep shade of red. Meanwhile, Lance preened silently under the attention, fanning his fins out gently so that they flashed in the low light.

"Now, I just need to know where I am," Shiro said nervously, glancing around them as he tried to make sense of fragmented shards of his memories of the coast they'd sailed up. "Do you know what this place is called?" he asked.

"We're just north of Pinacate," Lance supplied hesitantly. Shiro's face paled, and he and Hunk both became quickly alarmed. 

"Pinacate?" he asked weakly. Lance eyed him nervously.

"Yeah," Hunk said.

"The Garrison territory?"

"That's it," Lance told him.

"Oh hell," Shiro moaned weakly.

**Author's Note:**

> Unfortunately I have no idea if I'm going to be continuing this. I'd really love to, as I've enjoyed writing this bit immensely, but with some... stuff that needs sorting out in my life it might take a while to get back into it. I do look forward to some heavy planning and plotting in my free time though, so who knows! Hope you enjoyed it.


End file.
